Post
by willpell » Tue Aug 14, 2018 7:56 pm
The new version of Powerful Build (seen on the Loxodons) utterly sucks. Who even tracks carry weight? They might as well not have bothered.
"Simic hybrids" is an extremely generic concept for a race; the version they included here has 9 possible permutations, and only 3 exist for your first four levels. This is unsatisfying to me in much the same way as the Rock Gnome's ability to build one of three useless mechanical trinkets; a lot of potential can be spliced in here without much effort, but so far I'm not impressed.
I like the fluff they gave the Vedalken here, but I'll never stop being somewhat sore about the fact that the Vedalken turned into generic blue humanoids when they were first brought back for Ravnica. The original Vedalken showed up in Mirrodin as fishy-faced creatures with four arms, who spent all their time wearing a diving helmet full of intelligence-enhancing "serum". It was later retconned that this was a mutation they induced in themselves, and that they naturally just look like blue-skinned humans with a slight Alien Rubber Forehead. It's pretty late to cry over that spilled milk, but I always have been sad about it.
I love what they did with the Viashino, but then I've always loved lizardmen so that was a pretty easy sell.
I hope to see another article like this one, assuming the missing content isn't already in the book. There are so many creatures we haven't seen yet - Boros minotaurs, Orzhov thrulls, Eidolon spirits, Selesnya "husks", Izzet weirds, and the age-stealing psychic vampires called the Moroii, just to name a few.